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Saamic / Lappish Profile

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24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Chung
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 17 of 24
10 August 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged 
I hope that you'll find it to be useful although most resources for (Northern) Saami are still meant for people who know Norwegian or Swedish. yangbowen from Unilang was right when he posted that to learn Northern Saami takes some effort and creativity just to gather a usable set of resources as a language-learner doesn't typically have a background in Norwegian or Swedish (nor Finnish, may I add) beforehand.

Anyway weren't you recording your progress with Gulahalan on Unilang? I've made the offer here before but if you'd like to continue learning Northern Saami with Gulahalan, I'd be happy to help even though I've never used that course. I've already worked through the first two volumes of Davvin and from what I've seen much of what is taught in Gulahalan is familiar to me (if only all that Swedish weren't in the way! :-P). I enjoy sticking up for the Finno-Ugric languages and passing on information about them when asked (including resources) seeing that many outsiders' perceptions of them are restricted to a few factoids about Finnish or Hungarian and/or disappointment in the lack of comprehensive resources by "trustworthy" name-brand publishers.
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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4926 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 18 of 24
12 August 2012 at 6:35am | IP Logged 
Hey Chung, you really work hard on leading people onto Finno-Ugric languages, nice job!
As for myself I'm really drowning into a small lake of 4 languages and can't swim up to the Arctic Ocean. I think waiting till I can read Northern Germanic would be part of the fun =D

As for Gulahalan, that is old! Sounds like I'm being stalked online lol =D After that I even gave a long break on learning languages because I had to focus on different aspects of life and so far I haven't got anywhere due to lack of self-discipline and excess of wanderlust. Things changed in the past 5 years surely, one of them being the amount of Saami books I got (again, all of them in Norwegian). I'll surely let you know when I try anything even if just for a quick trip, be it Mari or Saami!
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Norway
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4143 posts - 8864 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 19 of 24
12 August 2012 at 10:12am | IP Logged 
Wow. This was absolutely amazing. You made me want to travel up to Northern Norway now! I am ashamed
to say that although I have been to China, Egypt, Cuba and Ukraine among others, I have never been further
north in Norway than Tromsø. Perhaps next summer?
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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 20 of 24
12 August 2012 at 7:06pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Wow. This was absolutely amazing. You made me want to travel up to Northern Norway now! I am ashamed
to say that although I have been to China, Egypt, Cuba and Ukraine among others, I have never been further
north in Norway than Tromsø. Perhaps next summer?


Thank you. I like to think that this profile more than the others that I've drafted encourages others to start learning the language(s) under examination. It seems that Saamic languages to the average person mean nothing, or if they do have meaning, they're known just as Lappish and used by some reindeer-herders dressed in bright blue costumes with red and yellow trim.

I've hoped to demystify these languages somewhat and show that they can be worthy of serious study for non-linguists even though they are endangered and used natively in places often absent from travel itineraries as being limited to far northern Fennoscandia.

Tromsø is pretty far north, isn't it? It seems like it could be a decent place if you wanted to start getting acquainted with Northern Saami even though I found out that there was a bit of stink last year over the language's place in the city. If going to the far north is too much of a pain, I've read that Snåsa could be worth visiting as Southern Saami is official in that village.
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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4926 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 21 of 24
13 August 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged 
Chung, is there a Mari profile? I just realized that Mari has an FB channel which works as a companion to their main website (the same that translated the Russian textbook) and the chance of finding pen pals. They're very keen on promoting the language. There's also a Youtube music channel.
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 22 of 24
13 August 2012 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
Chung, is there a Mari profile?


Is that an invitation?

I may draft one but it depends how far I proceed in the course since I'd like to have a bit more background in the language to provide sufficient material for the profile, rather than to make it some pamphlet on Mari culture with not being the profile's focus. On another note, I've been thinking of drafting a profile for Latvian seeing that it seems to be a far more likely choice as a target language compared to Mari even though the latter would seem to need all the help that it could get in positive exposure (see below).

Expugnator wrote:
I just realized that Mari has an FB channel which works as a companion to their main website (the same that translated the Russian textbook) and the chance of finding pen pals. They're very keen on promoting the language. There's also a Youtube music channel.


They do seem keen on the language, don't they? MariUver has some interesting stuff and I noted down several other links for Mari in the Finno-Ugric profile.

Nevertheless I have found their efforts interesting after having read Christopher Culver's experience of doing fieldwork in Mari El last year.

Food for thought, definitely.
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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4926 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 23 of 24
14 August 2012 at 10:51pm | IP Logged 
I should have checked the template. For me those language profiles were just webliographies. I see that they are a sort of walkthrough focused on explaining to self-studying people what they are likely to find at each language.

I shared your link at another community and the person who was talking about Mari there said that was expected, but there are good and bad sides as always. I personally don't see it as a reason for giving up on Mari. People from www.mari-language.com also got a profile on FB.

As for Latvian, bear in mind there are several obscure titles far away from the leading publishing houses, both in English and in Russian. You know where to go for trying them out.

(I think I've been too much off-topic now).
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6916 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 24 of 24
15 August 2012 at 2:02am | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
I should have checked the template. For me those language profiles were just webliographies. I see that they are a sort of walkthrough focused on explaining to self-studying people what they are likely to find at each language.

I shared your link at another community and the person who was talking about Mari there said that was expected, but there are good and bad sides as always. I personally don't see it as a reason for giving up on Mari. People from www.mari-language.com also got a profile on FB.

As for Latvian, bear in mind there are several obscure titles far away from the leading publishing houses, both in English and in Russian. You know where to go for trying them out.

(I think I've been too much off-topic now).


No, not at all. There's always time to talk about Finno-Ugric languages :-).

I don't actually see Culver's blog posting as a reason to stop studying Mari either, and am happy to be learning it with a solid course for English-speakers. I put it out there because it made me readjust my attitude to the Finno-Ugric languages that don't have national backing. When I first started creating the Saamic profile I didn't hold out much hope in learning it as a viable endeavour for the independent learner seeing that so few resources were available and almost all that was available was in Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish as well as rather dated (e.g. Nielsen's bidirectional dictionary is still an important reference even though its spelling convention is no longer used in modern courses). I just figured that it'd be a little compile a profile in a set of languages that's rarely-learned by outsiders. However my attitude towards them changed after going to Sápmi, getting in touch with a couple of people involved in the revitalization of Inari Saami and slowly adding to an ever-growing store of resources dating from the last 10 years (much of it still in Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish, mind you). No matter the miniscule population of native speakers in Saamic, at least a few of them may well survive beyond my lifetime and so outsiders who'd like to learn at least certain Saamic languages have a fighting chance, provided they have at minimum a high-beginner's reading knowledge in Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish to use the available resources.

With Mari, I felt initially that as the fifth-most spoken Finno-Ugric language and some outside interest, the language wasn't in as dire straits as some of the Saamic ones. Certainly the work of Timothy Riese, Jeremy Bradley and others at the University of Vienna on that Mari website is commendable given my interest in Finno-Ugric languages. Culver's blog post refined my understanding of it though as I had never heard so starkly how a quite large and concentrated body of native speakers could be that apathetic about their native language.

For a Latvian profile I was actually thinking of putting it together as I was recently in Latvia and had a good look at the common choices in learning resources for the language while rooting through several bookstores in Riga; no need to go rooting through far-flung bazaars.


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